Hang Gliding - FAQ - What's needed?
This last article is not intended as help to individuals, but more like my own personal views of improving Hang Gliding as a sport. Most of the hang gliders out there are controlled by weight-shifting. A few advanced models have control surfaces instead, and I consider such controls as the only real future of hang gliding. I should not have to pay the cost of small house to get them, and I do not like the severe lack of "repairability" of those very advanced wings. I consider these expensive composite hang gliders to be the province of rich people who can just walk away from any damaged HG laughing, whenever some minor structural damage may happen to it.
Most hang gliding contests allow only the antiquated weight-shifting as the flight controls, and they force any other control system to compete against only the most expensive and advanced wings. The time is long past when we need to ditch weight-shifting, and use aerodynamic controls on the gliders that we fly for fun. IMHO, the usual HG competition rules have blocked the advancement of HG as a sport for far too long now. I, for one, refuse to particpate in any HG contests in the first place - I fly for FUN. I want gliders with power steering, power brakes, and a grand excess of pitch control as my daily flying machine. This is not difficult, but the HG manufacturers want to do well in those silly contests, and so they build only weight-shift HGs. They do not cater to people who just want to have fun with a responsive and safer flying machine. Safer? Yes! Newer pilots may need HGs that can respond very well to control inputs, in situations where weight-shifting alone will not be sufficient. Some pilots might write off the inevitable results as an "inexperienced pilot," but the truth may be that the hang glider simply could not respond to weight-shift controls in time. In some cases, turbulence may put the pilot into a "weightless" situation, and weight-shifting in those conditions is absolutely meaningless. What is the pilot expected to do then? Hang on and pray? I am not impressed by such a choice. I know better, and I want active controls in bad air.
I believe there are several ways to add simple and effective controls to a hang glider. They will not add much weight or complexity. "Purists" may still choose to weight-shift the hang glider, although I really doubt that anybody would persist in that dumb exercise after more than a few hours airborne. One way would be by the use of wing spoilers. I know of a Denver pilot who used them on his flexwing, over two decades ago. For about 25 years, I personally flew a Fledgling, the legendary rigid wing HG of its' day, with wingtip drag rudders that acted as NASA winglets when not being used for turning. I speculate now that we could control the turning of a HG by using the washout struts to lift the trailing edge on one side. Pulling up one wingtip, changing the flying angle of that wingtip, would cause the glider to bank and turn in that direction. Pulling up both sides at once, combined with a strong dive command, should produce a fairly steep glide angle, with low airspeeds, which would be very useful (and SAFER) for landing approaches into small landing fields. I have not worked out the mechanics of that proposal just yet, but there are many bright pilots in hang gliding who may be better able to construct such a simple system of HG controls. In all cases, any failure of the aerodynamic control surfaces to operate would not be serious, because the pilot could still control the hang glider "normally," by weight shift, in that case.
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